The social phase of the kindergarten is most interesting to the student of social economics. Coöperative work is strongly emphasized; and the child is inspired both to live his _own full_ life, and yet to feel that his life touches other lives at every point,--"for we are members one of another." It is not the unity of the "little birds," in the couplet, who "agree" in their "little nests," because "they'd fall out if they didn't," but a realization, in embryo, of the divine principle that no man liveth to himself. As to specifically religious culture, everything fosters the spirit out of which true religion grows. In the morning talks, when the children are most susceptible and ready to "be good," as they say, their thoughts are led to the beauty of the world about them, the pleasure of right doing, the sweetness of kind thoughts and actions, the loveliness of truth, patience, and helpfulness, and the goodness of the Creator to all created things. No parent, of whatever creed or lack of creed, whether a bigot or unbeliever, could object to the kind of religious instruction given in the kindergarten; and yet in every possible way the child-soul and the child-heart are directed towards everything that is pure and holy, true and steadfast. If the child love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." There is a vast deal of practical religion to be breathed into these little children of the street before the abstractions of beliefs can be comprehended. They cannot live on words and prayers and texts, the thought and feeling must come before the expression. As Mrs. Whitney says, "The world is determined to vaccinate children with religion for fear they should take it in the natural way." Some wise sayings of the good Dr. Holland, in "Nicholas Minturn," come to me as I write. Nicholas says, in discussing this matter of charities, and the various means of effecting a radical cure of pauperism, rather than its continual alleviation: "If you read the parable of the Sower, I think that you will find that soil is quite as necessary as seed--indeed, that the seed is thrown away unless a soil is prepared in advance.... I believe in religion, but before I undertake to plant it, I would like something to plant it in. The sowers are too few, and the seed is too precious to be thrown away and lost among the thorns and stones."